Theos-Talk Archives (March 2004 Message tt00393)

In a message dated 03/18/04 12:12:55 PM, global-theosophy@adslhome.dk writes:

>As far as I am concerned the Bailey books was - partly - written to confront
>certain Western groups of Seekers after Wisdom and Truth, so that they would
>get rid of what Blavatsky in the above mentions as "There are, however,
>Theosophists, and of the best and most devoted, who do suffer from such
>weakness for authority."
>
>Did this help ?

Maybe some of what came before. But, not really this last observation (f I 
understand it correctly)... Because Bailey went to great efforts to establish 
her "authority" by creating a possibly fictitious "Tibetan" as her mentor. 
Most Bailey followers I know counter any disagreement with the pseudo occult 
teachings in AAB's books, by referring to the authority of the Hierarchy and the 
infallibility of DK, and sometimes go on to cite DK's statement that HPB's 
theosophy was "kindergarten stuff" and AAB's is "graduate level." They then go 
on to say that the reason anyone can disagree with AAB is that they are not yet 
ready to comprehend and accept the arcane meaning behind the teaching of the 
rays, authority of the Hierarchy, etc., etc. Of course, I have no counter 
argument for that sort of bias -- other than citing HPB's warnings. 

However, my in depth comparison of the two teachings after more than 40 years 
of eclectic study of Blavatsky, Besant, Bailey, Leadbeater, Gurdjieff, 
Crowley, Ouspensky, etc., and occultism in general, leads me to believe that 
Bailey's version of theosophy is a greatly distorted mishmash, cleverly designed to 
appeal to those mystical and magical mentalities that need to play with 
psychism and to worship and follow an infallible authority figure -- such as a 
returning Christ in the flesh that reflects the biblical Jesus accepted by 
Christians. 

In general, I agree with much of the the assessment of AAB's teachings vs. 
the theosophy of HPB made by Cleather and Crump See:
http://users.aol.com/uniwldarts/uniworld.artisans.guild/HPBvsAB.html

LHM